Let me tell you about a little-known hike in the Franconia region of Germany.
If you’re looking for a hike filled with drama—alpine meadows, yodel-inducing high altitude vistas, and bragging rights—then this is not your hike.
But how about a path through peaceful beech trees without another soul in sight? If the world has jangled your nerves and you could you use a long wooded walk, how about one with occasional views over perfectly tended vineyards, punctuated by the prettiest imaginable Bavarian villages?
I couldn’t be happier to tell you that I have a blog series–and eventually a book–coming out about how children are taught to read in different parts of the world. As Justin and I have been traveling, I’ve been visiting elementary schools and talking with teachers. In each location, I learn as much as I can about the language, the writing system, and how schoolchildren are taught to read it. Let me tell you, it’s been fascinating.
You know where you can really see how a community is preserving its culture and expressing its values? In the local elementary school. I’ve been inside of many.
A classroom in Kenitra, Morocco.
The best part is that this series is on Reading Rockets, the fantastic, comprehensive source for all things related to how children learn to read. I relied on Reading Rockets when I was teaching, and it just keeps getting stronger in its vast archive of good information for teachers, parents, and everyone interested in the cornerstone of education–teaching children to read.
(If you came here from No Sidebar, thank you and welcome! I love comments. I also write postcards from, well, wherever we are at https://launaatlarge.substack.com/.)
Recently I heard someone use the word abundance to explain why minimalism is not for her. I want a life of abundance, she said. Such a beautiful, positive word. Me too, I thought.
I can see what she means. She’s not the only person I’ve heard speak of minimalism like this, as the opposite of abundance and all that word implies of ample everything, handfuls of plenty, big bouquets of living large. It gave me pause to consider that these two words might be on opposite sides of a spectrum. And yet here I am with very few possessions in the minimalist life I have chosen. How do I square minimalism with a yearning for abundance? Is it true that they are mutually exclusive?
I recently saw an old friend who had just returned from a destination wedding on the Mayan Riviera. When I asked about it, he handed me his phone so I could flip through the photos.
A beautiful wedding. It cost a lot.
A lot.
What looks like a wedding ring is actually a time machine. Each time I look at that tiny diamond, I’m reminded of how long we’ve been together and how far we’ve come. I wouldn’t “trade it up” for anything.
This blog is about minimalism and travel, so it may feel a little off-topic to tread into the shark-infested waters of wedding costs. But stay with me on this: a decision against a dream wedding, opting for a modest wedding instead, could be the beginning of a dream life.
If hiking is something you enjoy, you’ll want to hike the Samaria Gorge–a 16km, unique hiking experience on Crete. Any online searching for things to do on Crete will quickly uncover this scenic, iconic gorge–it’s the second most visited site on Crete (after the Palace of Knossos). Justin and I hiked it on a beautiful October day and we highly recommend it to you.
It’s multi-step, all-day excursion. The journey forms a triangle: travel south from Chania to the gorge then hike to the sea, take ferry east along the coast, then travel north back to Chania. You may be led to believe, as I was, that it’s difficult to get there. Site after site tried to steer me to guided tours, rental cars, and even taxis. But you know what will work equally well but will cost a great deal less?
I started writing this on a train from Plovdiv to Sofia, kept on writing on a plane, then on a balcony in Athens overlooking a tangle of other balconies. I spent a month in Bulgaria, and now that I’m looking at it from another place and culture, I’ve finally reached a kind of answer to that question, often posed before we came.
The first section of our nomadic lives was driving around the US. We had our streamlined nomadic luggage, but we also had stuff in the car–food, extra clothes, spare shoes, all kinds of this and that.
So the real test has been these last two weeks in Sofia and Plovdiv, Bulgaria, when we each have a carry-on suitcase and a backpack and that’s it.
In fact it’s rare that–when we mention that we’re on our way to Bulgaria–the response is something other than “Why Bulgaria?” We’ve come to refer to it as The Question.
If you were asking The Question, I could give you a list of reasons, such as these:
